Concrete reinforcing bar material (rebar) is used in many applications to strengthen concrete structures. Such materials are often positioned in grids or other supporting structures wherein suspension, relative positioning and securement of materials are controlled using wire ties. While in wide usage, these commonly used wire ties are often less than robust, breaking, sliding or stretching out of position when concrete is poured and allowing rebar movement thereby reducing their effectiveness. Improvements to standard wire ties, such as plastic harnessing, have been heretofore suggested and/or utilized but suffer many of the same deficiencies (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,699,642).
A variety of securing structures in the nature of monolithic clips, typically of molded plastic material, have been suggested for adjacently locating rebar materials (see U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2008/0115449 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,469,515, 7,143,563, 5,371,991, 4,617,775, 4,610,122, D534,418, D526,188, D510,857, and Des. 355,582). Many of these devices are open-ended clamping structures that may still allow significant movement of rebar materials placed therein, including total dislodgement therefrom. Many seemingly lack the structural integrity necessary to hold the rebar in place and have no means of locking themselves on the rebar material, often relying solely on the memory of the plastic material to maintain engagement. Moreover, some of these clips require tools to engage the clip with the rebar, requiring careful manufacture of clip tolerances as well as maintenance of additional tools in the field.
A variety of multi-part rebar securing structures such as clips, spacers and retainers have also been heretofore suggested and or utilized (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,241,071, 7,143,563, 6,112,494, 5,893,252, 5,878,546, 5,127,763 4,835,933, and 3,300,930). While some improve upon open-ended designs, many still suffer from lack of sufficient clamping force to firmly and securely retain material positioning and inability to accept various sized/shaped materials, are expensive to manufacture and time consuming to install, and utilize unions or other features that may be susceptible to breakage or dislodgement.
Further improvement in the design and utilization of rebar material securing structures could thus still be utilized.